THE VERSATILITY OF T. S. ELIOT

S. JANAKIRAMA SASTRY, M. A.

Head of the Department of English, Rangaraya Medical College, Kakinada

The sudden demise of Mr. T. S. Eliot has removed from the literary firmament a brilliant star that illuminated the world for over four decades. Perhaps no other litterateur has influenced his contemporaries so profoundly as Eliot did. He has a unique place among English writers–unique in the sense, that in him are combined poet, dramatist, essayist and, above all, critic. In fact there was no form of literary expression that he touched and did not adorn. To present a bird’s eye view of the services he rendered to the cause of literature is the main aim of this essay.

A man of great erudition, Eliot began his literary career as a poet. By that time English poetry was dominated by the Georgean poets, who were trying their best to continue the Victorian Romantic Tradition. Eliot strongly reacted and revolted against the exoteric nature of the Georgean School of poetry. He believed that poetry ought to be esoteric. Not only in regard to the nature of poetry but also in several other things like the language, the usage of poetic idioms, and rhythms, Eliot had something original to say. Thus by the time he appeared on the English poetic scene, Eliot was ready with his own theory of poetry which he had put into practice in all his works. Poets and critics who were faithfully following the Romantic tradition were both surprised and shocked at the views of Eliot. In the words of Eliot himself, “The twentieth century is still the nineteenth, although it may acquire its own character in course of time.” This affinity of people with, and their liking for, the nineteenth century tastes made Eliot a controversial figure in the literary world.

The early poems of Eliot like “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” reveal him as a poet of disgust and disillusion. As Miss Bradbrook points out, Eliot’s early poetry published during the war of 1914-18, depicts in ironic and epigrammatic terseness the little anxieties, social embarrassments and unacknowledged vacuity of the polite society of Boston and London. We discern in it little more than the atmosphere we come across in the novels of James Joyce.

It is after the publication of “The Wast Land”, in 1922, that Eliot was recognised as a great poet. Though there was a big controversy about the poem, its publication was hailed as a landmark in the history of English poetry, equal in importance to the publication of “The Lyrical Ballads.” Based on an ancient legend in which a knight saves the Waste Land from drought and restores the youth of an old king by riding to Chapel Perilous and questioning the Lance and the Grail (symbols of the male and female principles), the Waste Land presents ironic pictures of modern manners with an astonishing variety of imagery and rhyme. The poet compares modern civilization to the Waste Land and suggests in an allegorical manner that we can obtain youth and life-giving rain by journeying far, questioning our condition and learning a hard lesson. Despite the praise lavished on the Waste Land, the criticism, that it is un-understandable to the common reader, cannot altogether be ignored. The reason for this may be found in the anthropological background of the poem, and in the symbols drawn from kindred myths and religions. Only those with some knowledge of Buddhism, Dante’s works, and the Jacobean Drama can understand and appreciate the Waste Land, which is unique in more than one sense.

In the later works of T. S. Eliot, like “The Hollow Men” and “The Four Quartets,” we find the philosopher becoming predominant. This does not mean that Eliot ceased to be a poet. As Eliot himself points out elsewhere, “though we may read literature merely for pleasure or entertainment or aesthetic enjoyment, this reading never affects simply a sort of special sense; it affects us as entire human beings; it affects our moral and religious existence.” Thus he justifies the philosophic note being predominant in his works. The main difference between Eliot and other poets is that in Eliot the philosophic statements and poetic images are so inextricably interwoven, that we cannot say, which is the philosophy and which is the poetry. It is by this characteristic that Eliot’s poetry acquires universality.

Though Eliot began his literary career as a poet, he had from the beginning a strong desire to write plays. As a preliminary to this he published several essays on the technique of the drama even in the twenties. In a way during those days Eliot was making necessary preparations to write those famous plays which were to place him in an enviable position among the English dramatists. Unlike many of his predecessors, Eliot has chosen, and has chosen rightly, the poetic drama. In “A Dialogue of Dramatic poetry,” Eliot states that if we want to express the permanent and the universal, we should express ourselves in verse. In his view poetry and drama are not separable elements. Eliot’s name as a dramatist will be long remembered for two reasons. He is to a large extent responsible for the revival of the poetic drama in the twentieth century. Though stalwarts like Shelley and Hardy attempted poetic dramas, it is only after the production of “The Murder in the Cathedral,” “The Family Re-union,” and “The Cocktail Party” that the poetic drama has had a firm footing. Besides, Eliot’s dramas have a coherency, consistency, and actability which have won for him a high place among the English dramatists.

In her monograph on the work of T. S. Eliot, Miss Bradbrook observes, “Had he not become the most famous poet of his time, Eliot would have been its most distinguished critic.” As in poetry, in the field of criticism also Eliot formulated certain principles which he had practised in his critical works. If his essays entitled, “The Perfect Critics”, “The Imperfect Critics” and “Tradition and Individual Talent,” were so popular, that they formed the material for two new schools in criticism, known as “The Cambridge School” and “The New Criticism,” his work upon individual writers was even more influential in redirecting the taste of the day. These works of T. S. Eliot had been a source of inspiration for the young critics and poets who were just beginning their careers. They looked upon him as a literary giant and a versatile genius. Thus this great Nobel laureate dominated the literary world for over four decades. If literary historians consider the present era as the age of T. S. Eliot, they are hardly mistaken. The death of this literary dictator of the twentieth century leaves a vacuum, which cannot be easily filled up in the near future.

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